


Cause and Effect

by Riona



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Coming Out, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 10:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20906357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riona/pseuds/Riona
Summary: So Dina's kissed Ellie, and that's great, that's incredible. Only one problem: she did it in public. Which means word of it got back to Joel. And he feels that maybe this calls for a fatherly chat. And he'sreallybad at this.





	Cause and Effect

**Author's Note:**

> I feel slightly ridiculous for writing fanfiction based solely on trailers for the second game, but I couldn't resist.
> 
> As this was written prior to _The Last of Us Part II_, the game is probably going to end up contradicting it.

The infected haven’t breached the town’s walls in nearly two years, but Ellie’s still awake in an instant when someone raps on her door. Knife in her hand. She doesn’t even remember grabbing it from under her pillow.

“Ellie?” a voice calls.

Ellie relaxes. “Joel. What’s up?”

“Last patrol came back with some food,” Joel says, from the other side of the door. He’s not trying to open it; Ellie made him swear to leave her closed door alone, back when she was around sixteen, and she barricades it at night anyway. “You want to meet me at the warehouse and help out with the inventory?”

It’s still dark outside the windows. “What time even is this?”

“Your patrol’s at first light, right?” Joel asks. “Thought we’d get this out the way first.”

“What, it can’t wait until after? All the food’s gonna run away on little legs?”

“You gonna help or not?”

It’s not really a question. Work needs to be done, you do it. “Yeah, sure.”

Boots walking away. Ellie yawns and stretches and _holy fuck, Dina kissed her_.

That was real, right? She’s dreamed it enough to know the difference. It was _real_ this time.

What was Dina trying to do? Was she just trying to make Jesse jealous? Like she needs to; she was the one who broke it off with him, and Ellie knows he’d take her back in a heartbeat.

So what was it? Some kind of joke? Or...

Fuck. Ellie presses her hands over her face, tries to calm herself down. She’s so screwed.

-

It’s cold as hell, and it’s tempting to stay in bed as long as she can get away with it before Joel comes back to check on her. But Dina’s on patrol as well. The longer Ellie waits, the bigger the risk of running into her at breakfast.

Not like she’ll be able to avoid her when first light hits. But she’s not ready right now.

Ellie swings by the mess hall, picks up her morning ration. Couple of strips of unspecified meat. She eats them on the way to the warehouse and grabs a handful of snow to rub the grease off her fingers, dries her hands on her jeans.

She knocks on the warehouse door before opening it. Never open a door without knocking. That’s how you get shot.

“So where’s this food?” she asks, closing the door behind her.

Joel gestures to a table. Two cans, two rabbits, a squirrel.

“Wow,” Ellie says, wandering over. “Yeah, I can completely see why writing all this down is a two-person job. You woke me up for this?”

“I don’t know,” Joel says. “Thought it might give us a chance to talk.”

He pauses for a moment. He’s not really looking at her. Ellie has a bad feeling.

“Heard you and Dina made a stir on the dance floor last night,” he says.

Oh, man.

“Yeah,” Ellie says. “We broke out that goofy dance Tommy taught us.” What did he call it? Macaroni?

“I think you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh. You sure?”

He doesn’t seem angry. He seems awkward. She... guesses that’s better?

She knows a little about the world before the infection, how boys were into girls and girls were into boys and it was a really big deal if you weren’t. It’s not like it’s not a thing now; some people will still be assholes about it. But people mostly have bigger things to worry about, she guesses.

Here’s the thing: Joel is _from_ that old world, and she doesn’t really know how he feels about this stuff. It’s why she always kept things pretty quiet with her ex.

And then Dina kissed her in the middle of the dance floor, and now she guesses she’s going to find out how Joel feels.

“Word is you kissed her,” he says.

“She kissed _me_,” Ellie says automatically, because it’s still an incredible, unbelievable thing she’s had to repeat to herself fifty times to be sure she didn’t dream it.

“Oh,” Joel says. He pauses. “And, uh, you were okay with that? You wanted it to happen?”

Holy shit, yes.

“I don’t know,” Ellie says. “I guess it was fine.”

“Fine?” Joel echoes. “Believe me, heading into these things because it feels _fine_ is how you end up divorced.”

Ellie snorts with nervous laughter. “I’m not _marrying_ Dina. I just... I don’t know, we...”

Joel shifts uncomfortably. Picks up one of the cans to inspect it.

This conversation is a disaster. She’d almost prefer it if she’d opened the warehouse door and found a bunch of Clickers.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Ellie asks.

“I don’t know,” Joel says. “Thought we should clear the air. Feels like I should know what’s going on with you. And... I don’t know, I figured maybe you’d be worried about what I’d think.”

“Kind of,” Ellie says. “I mean, definitely now that you can’t even fucking look at me.”

He looks at her. “Sorry.”

“So?” Ellie asks. She doesn’t know if she wants to know, but, yeah, she thinks she might have to. “What do you think?”

There’s a pause.

“Is this new?” Joel asks. “This whole thing? This... girls... thing?”

Ellie cracks up laughing.

“Ellie.”

“Sorry!” She wipes half a tear from her eye. “Sorry, sorry. _This girls thing_. Oh, man. I’m gonna call it that.”

“I’m just trying to figure out—”

“Cat,” Ellie blurts out, because she has to say it while she’s still too entertained for it to be scary. “We were together for a while. And, you know, back in Boston...” She can’t say it. “Uh, yeah. Cat. But the Dina thing, that’s new. I mean, if it’s even a thing. I don’t know.”

Fuck. It’s out there now.

“Uh, wow,” Joel says. “Guess there’s stuff I’ve still gotta learn about you.”

Ellie watches him anxiously. “You okay?”

He scratches the back of his neck. “You still alive?” he asks, after a moment.

“Uh, yeah,” Ellie says. “Yeah, pretty sure.”

He smiles a little. “I’m okay.”

“Okay.” Ellie lets out a breath. “Okay. Wow. You know, no offence, but I feel like you made that _way_ scarier than it needed to be.”

“Sorry,” Joel says. “I’m trying. I just – staying quiet, letting you think you couldn’t talk to me about, you know, relationships and stuff, it didn’t seem like no way to raise a kid.”

She’s not a kid. She hasn’t been one for at least five years.

She thinks about saying, _What about lying to me? What about not letting me hear the facts and make my own decision? What about making it our fault that the world’s still this fucked up?_

She pushes the thought down. She doesn’t _know_ it was a lie. She has to believe it wasn’t.

“Right,” she says instead. “And now I _know_ I can’t talk to you about it, because you’ll make it super, super awkward.”

He clears his throat. “Don’t know how much consolation it’ll be, but I don’t think I’d be much better at this if it’d been a boy.”

Ellie pauses. Laughs a little. “You know, that actually does kind of help.”


End file.
